Postsingular

"Ready for a private message stream?" said the pelican.

"Let Thuy and Craigor hear, too," said Jayjay.

"And us," said Momotaro.

"Not you kids," said Jil. "You need to get back in bed. It's too cold out here." She shuddered. "Aren't you cold?"

"Aw, Mom."

"Come on." Jil and the kids disappeared into the cabin.

"Here we go," said the pelican to Thuy, Jayjay, and Craigor, the three of them squatting around him. Overhead the clouds were breaking up and the moon was shining through, big and bright, just past full.

The data flowed in, a mental movie in three scenes. As soon as Thuy realized what she was seeing, she began forwarding it to Chief Bim Brown.

***

The first scene shows Sonic on the day he was abducted, October 21, two weeks before the election. Sonic is closed in by the quantum-mirrored walls of the ExaExa labs, sitting at a long white table drinking a big mug of coffee, still in his red T-shirt with his pleated leather coat on the table beside him.

One wall is covered with the teleport grill, the opposite wall holds a door, and the side walls are mounted with four view screens simulating natural phenomena: cracking mud, wind-tossed branches, a beach fire, and a waterfall.

Set into a niche like an altar beneath the bonfire screen is a smooth-cornered white plastic box bearing the ExaExa beetle logo and a single red button on its side. The box has intricate latches on its lid.

Jeff Luty is talking to Sonic. He's still gangly, but he's put on some weight, living alone in his lab. His wavy, unwashed hair is drawn into a ponytail. He wears a bracelet of colored oval stones around his wrist. The stones are incised to look like beetles. His skin is unhealthy, almost gray. He has plastic ants on his chin and cheeks, but his ropy chapped lips show. He licks his upper lip, then compulsively applies some waxy lip balm from a tube.

"What's with the ants, Jeff?" says Sonic.

"A visual pun," says Luty, his plain face forming a faint smile. "I'm in personal crunch mode to find a nant design that orphids and code-hackers can't trash. I'm farming a few thousand evolutionary algorithms. The formic minibots on my face are ant-shaped shoons loaded with sample nant nanocodes. They're a fake beard, too."

"Like you'd go outside wearing plastic ants?" says Sonic.

"Well, no, not while I'm indicted for capital charges," says Luty. "With my picture in all the post offices. That's fame, huh? I'm counting on Dick Too Dibbs to pardon me. He'd better. My ads are flipping the election."

"So what do you want with me?"

Luty leans forward, licks his lips again, and scrapes a few of the plastic ants off his face and onto Sonic's head. "Try and trash these guys like you did Nektar's beetles. I enjoy watching a craftsman at work. Like a flenser peeling blubber off a whale."

"I'm not working for you," says Sonic.

"Contrariwise," says Luty. He goes to a cupboard, draws out a slug of raw piezoplastic, and slaps it down on the table in front of Sonic. He lets out a playful, infectious chuckle. "Haven't you always wanted to be an ant farm?"

Before Sonic can shy away, the plastic ants on his head go into high-speed motion, repeatedly ru

"Sweet hack, Sonic," says Luty. "Your low cu

"That rainbow scuzz on Grandmaster Green Flash," asks Sonic, calmly brushing off the dying plastic ants. "Was that one of your dipshit experiments?"

"Affirmative," says Luty. "Minus your crass modifier. I'm testing new viral nanomachines all the time." He walks over to the altar niche and pats the white chest. "And the best nanocodes go onto the little fellows in here. This is the Ark of the Nants, with my special new nant farm inside. The Ark of the Nants holds the world's new order. Soon I'll have my new nants loaded with nanocode that the white hats can't trash. I just wish I could have some face-to-face with Ond Lutter. He put all these nutso nanteater tricks into the orphids, and I'm always having to find more workarounds. I wish I knew the Hibrane jump-code. I'd like to teleport there and barnacle myself to Ond for a few hours. That room-to-room teleport grill of mine is a good start on the big jump, don't you think?"

"What if I hop back through your punk-ass grill?" says Sonic. "And get myself the fuck outta here?"

"Calm down," says Luty, applying lip balm. "Don't use language. That's a great expression, isn't it? You remind me of my high-school friend Carlos Tucay. We were go

"But I don't want nants to eat Earth," says Sonic.

"Oh, why do people always say that," says Luty. "Reality is software. What does it matter what system it's ru

"No," says Sonic.

"Look, I don't want to come on like an insane villain," says Luty. "But I do know about your family. It's abstractly possible that, in my desperation, I might do something to them. I'm getting a little weird here, cooped up in this lab waiting for Vearth

2.0 and the resurrected Carlos." Luty pops up a display of Sonic's fieldworker parents and his eleven brothers and sisters, i

"Oh man . . ." says Sonic. "Get me more coffee."

The second scene shows Dick Too Dibbs touring the lab on November 6, two days after the election. Seen informally, Too Dibbs comes across as even brighter and more strong willed than in his jokey ads. His narrow eyes are clear and observant. His gaze darts methodically around the equipment-filled room, taking an inventory: the teleport grill, the simulation screens, the cabinets and fixtures, the Ark of the Nants, and Sonic busy programming a golem-shaped shoon.

"I'm pla

"I don't hold with that particular line of religiosity," says Too Dibbs. "And you've heard me say I don't aim to end up in the death chamber like my cousin Dick."

"Oh, that was a glitch," says Luty. "My old nants were hacked by a rogue employee. Ond Lutter. I respect Ond, but we don't see eye to eye. We're in a bit of an arms race with each other." Luty tugs nervously at his limp ponytail. "Ond's orphids are an interesting challenge. Just recently I've developed some irreversible nants that look pretty tough. But I want to be sure they're truly orphid-proof before I release them. And this is where you come in." Luty mimes a salute. "It must be done, Mr. President. Battle stations!"